If you find you’re struggling with less than stellar rollers or you’ve got some unexplained ink slurring in certain areas of a type form, one quick fix that often solves some of these issues (assuming you’ve already adjusted your rollers as they should be) is to lock up bearers with your form. These can be anything that’s type high, but I stick with 2 pica rule.

I’ve got a number of pieces cut to fit in my platen press chases and keep them just for this purpose. We’ll get to the Vandercook a little farther down.

When locking these up in the form, you want them to span the distance of the printable surface area, while also being completely out of the way for gauge pins. I keep mine as close to the left and right side of the chase as possible. The rollers will roll up and down these as they pass over the chase.

Below you can see the chase in the press with the metal type and bearers inked in green. I often find that when printing only a line or two of metal type, I get much better results using the bearers, which help to keep the rollers consistent over the form.

You might also notice that they will print, given that they’re type high. This is why it’s important to keep them well out of the way of the gauge pins!

If you don’t want them to print on your tympan, you can easily solve the problem by adjusting the packing under your makeready sheet. Use smaller sheets that don’t extend to where the bearers hit the tympan. It might not completely eliminate hitting it, but it’ll go a long way.

For the Vandercook, I have two long 18 point brass rules as bearers. I try to keep these off to the top and bottom of the form.

Here’s one uninked:

And with ink:

These will also print on the tympan but you can do the same trick with packing as on the platen press; just use a narrower pack under the tympan.

You obviously don’t have to worry about gauge pins on the Vandercook, which is great. But you should be mindful, if the bearers are printing on the tympan, of where your paper and hands are so you’re not inadvertently getting ink on either.

Yes! You can do it! If you’re struggling with slurring or sloppy type and roller tweaks don’t sort it out, give bearers a try and see if that helps.